


Essay on the history and geography of Panem

by FernWithy



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-07 22:51:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1917024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FernWithy/pseuds/FernWithy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I'm mostly a fanfic writer, but I'm obsessed with the question of how Panem actually <i>works</i>.  So I sat down with maps and articles and all of my questions, and came up with this.</p><p>I have still not figured out how in the world the merchants of D12 stay in business, since no one can shop in their stores very much, including each other.  It's a mystery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Essay on the history and geography of Panem

**Author's Note:**

> A version of parts of this essay appeared on DeviantArt.

When we first enter the world of _The Hunger Games_ , the nation of Panem -- its Capitol and twelve districts -- are long established, and the narrator is not someone who has a great deal of interest in sharing the history and geography, leaving it largely to readers to figure out. This is just my take, done just for fun and fanfic purposes.

History and geography would be closely related, especially in an upended world like this. What happened? How did Panem come to be, and how did the districts emerge? The books have very scant information on the past. There was a time of wars and environmental catastrophes, during which existing nations seem to have ceased to exist. It seems to have affected the entire world -- certainly, the rebellion didn't look for handy allies across the Atlantic, but instead to the secretive District Thirteen, which also seems to be Snow's only security concern. So in some way, the human population of earth has, for some reason, gathered in North America. What scenario would account for that?

What were the catastrophes? I'd assume they'd have to be more than the sea level rise, which more people would be able to escape. Katniss mentions wars, which probaby would use weapons that would do major damage. Environmental concerns and wars would lead to health crises, most likely. I'd still postulate other things -- maybe there was seismic weaponry? Whatever happened, the human race was drastically reduced, probably to bottleneck population levels.

It seems unlikely that worldwide catastrophes would somehow spare North America while destroying other places, so my assumption, given the scenario, is that after a total destruction, survivors from around the world simply came together. Since they landed in North America, I'd assume that there was some kind of massive search and rescue attempt led by either the remains of the U.S. or the beginnings of a proto-Capitol (based entirely on where they ended up). There probably wouldn't be a really sharp distinction in people's minds until historians got on the job well after the fact -- no one in the early middle ages said, "Yup, we sure have reached the end of Rome and the beginning of the medieval period." It would be one of those historical eras that seems murky in retrospect, even to people who are interested (which doesn't include our friendly neighborhood narrator).

An important note technologically seems to be that there's been atmospheric damage, which most likely means that there is no more satellite communication. To get around the curvature of the earth, you'd have to depend on towers and cables and wires... things that the Capitol could easily control, from the moment they chose to control it.

So basically, there is a ruined world, most likely in total chaos. One group of survivors maybe has access to more technology than others, and creates the roots of a society, and sends out feelers to bring in people from everywhere else. That would eventually become the Capitol. (I think of it something like the Boulder Free Zone in _The Stand_ at first.) As more and more people arrive, it becomes more and more crowded, and eventually, population pressures would compel groups to break off and create the early districts. It becomes clear that the districts can supply the ever-hungry Capitol with more raw materials, and so new districts are founded just for the purpose of accessing resources (a coastline for seafood, a forest for lumber, land for agriculture, etc). At first, it really is essentially a cooperative venture, with the Capitol supporting exploratory groups and supplying early settlers, but eventually, greed gets the better of it, and the districts become exploited colonies. That would make sense.

There is, however, the anomaly of District Thirteen... and Twelve and Eleven, for that matter. District Thirteen is a high tech, weapons-heavy area that is capable of taking on the Capitol. The unusual gray eyes of District Twelve seem to also be common in District Thirteen, and they are geographically close. 

District Twelve also has an unusual population pattern -- two social classes with distinct features, who don't seem to have mixed much... implying that they maybe haven't been living together all that long, in terms of demographics. You have the Seam, which appears to be a remnant of an original Appalachian population -- they seem to have the old culture, which wouldn't be perpetuated by newcomers just settling in -- and the merchants, who are viewed as outsiders, even Capitol toadies (because of their relative wealth). This resembles a "buffer group," an intermediary introduced to stand between the overlords and the worker class. Could the merchants have been introduced by the Capitol into an existing district to "facilitate" assimilation? It wouldn't be unheard of, and it would fit the facts on the ground. They could have been there only a couple of hundred years.

What this could suggest is that while the Capitol was going about its business in the West, in the east, District Thirteen had an independent sphere of influence, which included what would become Twelve and Eleven. These seem to be the districts that are separate and watched (especially Eleven). Instead of founding these districts, the Capitol took its first step toward empire by defeating and annexing them.

Eventually, with a fractious and uncooperative population in the east, and ever more pressure to produce materials in the west, the Capitol would tighten its grip, leading to the Dark Days, some seventy-four years before the beginning of the series. (There's no clue how long the war lasted before the Capitol won, and I think we can assume with District Thirteen in charge that it was ugly on both sides.) The rebellion was ultimately put down hard, and what we see from that time forward is the total dystopia of Panem, with the Capitol stomping down hard on the rebellious districts in a way it may not have earlier.

So, what about the geography part of it?

I know the movies have their maps, and the games have theirs, but I'm pretty much ignoring them, because the fun of this comes from putting together vague clues from the books. ;p

First, we're told that there's been major flooding, covering much of the land in water. That will change the shape of the continent. Assuming that there's a total melt of the polar ice caps, "How Stuff Works" [theorizes a 61m (200ft) rise in sea levels.](http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/question473.htm) Using the [Global Sea Level Rise Map](http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/), you can get a picture of North America (or anywhere else, if you'd like) to see where the coast would change.  


There are two pretty easy points to find. The first is District Eleven, just because Suzanne Collins said it was in Atlanta, and I'm pretty sure she'd know. :D The second is the Capitol. It's a city in the Rockies with the mountains to the east (Katniss says that the mountains blocked off the Capitol from most of the districts) and a lake on the other side. Presuming they set up shop in the ruins of a contemporary city, that would limit the location quite a lot. Even if they didn't set up in a current city, there aren't a lot of places on the western slope of the Rockies with a lake on their west sides. The most obvious place would be Salt Lake City.

District Thirteen had a clue much more specific than I expected it to be -- their cover was graphite mining. There just isn't a lot of graphite mining in North America, and only graphite mine in striking distance of District Twelve is near [Kearney, Ontario.](http://www.ontariographite.com/s/kearney_mine.asp?ReportID=477207) Of course, that's not Thirteen's _real_ business, but if it's their cover, it has to be there.

To get the idea of the size of Panem, we know that District Twelve is as far as you can get from the Capitol. Using the [Radius Around a Point on a Map](http://www.freemaptools.com/radius-around-point.htm) tool, this is the extent of North America where it's possible for the districts to be.  


It's the majority of the continent, but all of New England and Canada's Maritime Provinces (and Quebec) are out of range. If people originally spread out from the Capitol, they probably aren't going to the extremes of the range.

I also used it to find out where in [Appalachia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachia#mediaviewer/File:Appalachian_region_of_United_States.gif) District Twelve could be. Katniss is probably not being terribly precise about a "week's walk" from D12 to D13, but she's most likely in the general vicinity. Assuming a slightly quicker walking pace than average (because Katniss would) and roughly 16 hours a day walking, that gives a 370 mile radius of D13, leaving an accessible bit of Appalachia stretching from the southern tier of New York state to just south of Pittsburgh, PA, with tiny slivers of Ohio and West Virginia. Conveniently, this part of Appalachia is part of the Pittsburgh Seam, a huge deposit of coal. So it fits. Given the accent SC uses to read Katniss, I'm guessing it's somewhere in the part that borders WV, though, to be fair, that accent isn't native to anywhere in the region. Then again, however many years down the line this supposed to be, it would be surprising if we recognized the language, let alone the accents, anywhere.

So -- Twelve and Thirteen are pretty findable:  


This puts 11, 12, and 13 in a rough line down the eastern part of the continent... a fairly easy line of influence. The most logical geographic boundary between Thirteen's influence and the Capitol's, at this point, is the Mississippi. The Capitol deciding to cross that barrier could easily have set off the first of many skirmishes.

With that in mind, there's one small geographic clue about a district. Katniss and her team are able to get to District Eight after a noon meeting and prep, arrive while it's still light out, and live through a battle, after which it is, again, still light out (the sky is clear). We don't know when they get back, but I think it's safe to say that there's not more than an hour and a half on board the hovercraft. Figuring the miles per minute from the forty-five minute trip to D13 (compared to the week's walk Katniss estimates), the hovercraft goes a little less than 500mph, and with the Mississippi as a border, Minneapolis would be doable in that time, and very uncomfortable with bad heating conditions in the winter, which would fit what little we know of District 8.

The other district that there's a reasonably good lock on is District Two, which is a string of little settlments in the Rockies. It's not hard to find Quarries in the Rockies -- those could be anywhere -- but they do have the Nut, a base built into the mountain that existed before and was shored up. Sounds like the [Cheyenne Mountain nuclear bunker](http://www.deviantart.com/users/outgoing?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheyenne_Mountain_nuclear_bunker), eh? So, Colorado springs, with an area stretching up and down the nearby mountains, as Katniss describes.

From Katniss's Victory Tour (and other comments), we know that the districts don't border each other. You don't leave D12 and cross into D11 or D13. They're freestanding entitites. You leave D12, then travel through no-man's land until you get to D11 about a day later. (Actually, it's probably technically the Capitol's land, since Gale's accused of "poaching," but there doesn't seem to be anyone really living there or using it, except for the trains.) This would make sense with the drastically reduced population.

Some districts, like Twelve, would only have the city to them. The mines may well go underground for a long way under the fence, but the district itself is the town. Industrial districts, like textiles, power, technology, and luxury are probably all fenced cities like we see in Twelve. Other districts, which use open air resources, would have to be larger, and would have a set-up like what Katniss saw in Eleven -- a huge expanse of land for working around a town deep inside. They may not all be as heavily fortified as Elven, but they'd all need room. From the sounds of the trip, District Eleven probably takes up a good deal of present-day Georgia, with its central town being in Atlanta.

The rest, the books don't give us a lot of clues about, so I'm going with progressively weaker guesses.

 **Places that need things**  
 **District Four:** Obviously a needs a coastline. This isn't a big issue in North America. Lots of coast. Finnick isn't just a fisherman, though; he's a graceful swimmer, at home in the water. This suggests (though doesn't necessitate) that it's a warm water area where he can do a lot of swimming. The best fishing area in the warm areas is the Gulf coast. Because it's low-lying and flat, most of the current coastal cities would be underwater. The city could be at any point on the coast. Probably, the shoreline is blocked off by some kind of fence outside the city, so people couldn't sail out and come back in outside the district. And since they also probably wouldn't want people going off to sea, I'm guessing the Gulf would be mined somehow.

 **District Seven:** Lumber. There's not a logical place to put it in shooting distance from D8 (or anywhere else in the radius from D13). So, just looking at the lumber industry, it's had three major centers -- New England, Upper Michigan, and the Pacific Northwest. New England is out, because New England is well outside the radius of Panem. Upper Michigan may be viable again by this point, but again, the Mississippi is a big barrier with all of the bridges probably destroyed. At any rate, the Pacific temperate rain forest is the best logging source in Panem. It needs a lot of land, because loggers would need to be able to move from one area to another and give places space to re-grow. The main city (I randomly popped it around Seattle) would likely be where the paper mills are. Again, they'd likely be blocked off from the sea somehow -- which might suggest the city being more around Portland, now that I think about it.)

 **District Nine:** Grain needs lots of growing space. The major grain states are in the Great Plains -- Iowa, Kansas, etc. There's no reason the land there should change, and it would still be the best for growing it. Using the Mississippi for an eastern border, I just gave them a lot of space, and put the city far off on the edge, where it wouldn't break up the fields.

 **District Ten:** Livestock also need a lot of space for grazing. While I was initially inclined to put it up in the livestock area in Big Sky country (Montana, Saskatchewan, etc), I realized that the close connection with the customs of District Four -- mentioned in connection with Finnick and Annie's wedding -- would suggest the more southern livestock center of Texas. It might even have been an offshoot of Four. (The numbering suggests that it's not the other way around.)

 **Wild Guessing**  
 **District One:** Almost certainly, a close offshoot of the Capitol: its first district. And no one is going to build a whole district to manufacture luxury goods, so my guess is that it was a pre-existing site, with the industry it was already associated with named as its sole industry when Panem's odd economy arose. I think there's a good chance that it started out as a resort for day trips from the Capitol. There are quite a few nice places like that in striking distance of Salt Lake. Honeyville is at the far end of the lake from the Capitol, which would be far enough that the populations wouldn't accidentally bump into each other, but close enough for weekend vacations.

 **District Three:** Why would they even ship something that central to the Capitol out of the Capitol in the first place? We do know that of the four early districts, three is the only one that isn't a career district and doesn't seem to have ever been on good terms with the Capitol. So maybe they exiled a bunch of dangerous scientists to punish them? They'd want it close, so the technology couldn't wander far. So, I figured the Bonneville Salt Flats would be a pretty punishing place to live.

 **District Five:** Power. Could, and should, be everywhere, but apparently has a distinct location in Panem. They probably process and store all kinds of energy. Lots of geothermal and hydro around Yellowstone, so...? It makes as much sense as anything else.

 **District Six:** How do you locate transportation? I put it between five and seven on the thought that maybe they numbered in order for once, and that maybe it was originally built as a way station to carry the lumber from Seven. But really, we don't have any textual or real world clues. Maybe they also run the trains and staff those fueling and maintenance stations out between the districts. I also think that the trains may go through a central point, rather than going district to district once you cross the Mississippi, and that point would be in District Six. But that's a total guess.

So, with all of that, here's about where I imagine the districts of Panem to be:  


Does that make any sense outside my head?


End file.
